Picture Book Pause

@picturebookpause.bsky.social

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Inserting moments of joy in your doomscroll via the mighty artform of the picture book, using examples on our bookshelf in Aotearoa New Zealand. (Profile pic is a Brian Wildsmith owl.) Always check the alt-text.

Ants shaking hands (first limbs?) in front of a random clock (perhaps they were under time pressure?) and a map of Aotearoa showing place names i te reo Māori. The blocks now spelling "Aotearoa" are under the map.
Caption: Ko Aotearoa! Ko tōku whenua.

Book cover entitled "Aotearoa" showing three ants in hard hats puzzling over some plans, facing jumbled alphabet blocks: ro Ao a a te

A little girl travels by origami boat in front of a forest of conifers.

A boy in sweatshirt, baggy pants and gumboots lies on the grass and smiles up at his ancient friend and guide, the taniwha, in the water beside him.

"She made crowns of daisies and then
she was a queen sitting on a green throne
under a willow tree that waved away
the heat of the sun. Her silver hair
looked lovely with crowns of daisies on it.
I made bracelets for her
and bracelets for me
and we wove grass together
for little green mats."
Image: Grandmother Lucy sits on her green throne, daisy chains around her wrists, head and top knot.

Grandmother Lucy and a little girl walk in long grass, raising their arms to "little black birds like paper darts".

Caption: A truck drew up and dumped out butter/ And they spread it out with a flap and a flutter./ Spoons and spades! Slap and slam!/ And they did the same with the strawberry jam.
Image: the biggest bread slice ever, topped with a farmer on a tractor & people using spades shoveling butter all over between mounds of strawberry jam.

An image of big red juicy tomatoes - maybe beefsteak by the size? - then thick red tomato sauce being tipped out of a bottle. Caption: "K is for tomato - tomorrow's ketchup."
Not shown: We love these images way more than the cover which doesn't do the book justice so we're not going to show it to you. Between that and the "too impatient to wait for the puzzle time" thing, the publisher dropped the ball imho. Anyway! Tomorrow's alphabet is written by George Shannon and illustrated by Donald Crews, who went on to win the Children's Literature Legacy Award in 2015, for his "lasting and substantial contribution to children's literature". Yay.

Front cover centring a toy bloke in a suit whose lightbulb ears really do light up, to the amazement of a kid, a camel, a cowboy on a horse. The pig in the tutu couldn't care less. Painted background of trees in blossom.

Cover of the Found Alphabet showing a cute "T for Train" made out of metal odds and ends, with a wavy steam subtitle claiming "the ordinary becomes the extraordinary". "Extraordinary" also features in the title of the next book we'll feature... is everybody trying to go 'hey guys, this is no bread-and-butter alphabet, like those other ones. Some of our pages don't have animals!"

Front cover of "M is for Metal! The loudest alphabet book on earth" by Paul McNeil and Barry Divola. The font is mostly gothic and several vowels have umlauts over them lol. Bright colours on black background with grey cartoons of people playing guitars etc

Cover of "A is for Aunty" with a bendy river contrasting with red dirt and white-trunk trees.
Not shown: at the back of the book, text explains Elaine Russell won an art competition around age 12 (approx 1953) and the prize was a trip to the Philippines. As it was govt policy to steal fair-skinned Aboriginal children, "Elaine's mother was afraid the prize was a trick and refused to allow her to go. Elaine can remember children just disappearing from the mission, never to be seen again, and she remembers her mother hiding her when government officials visited."

Cover of Alphabetical Sydney showing a yellow & green collage boat on blue sea.
Not shown: Throughtout the book, the mix of drawing & photo collage is v cool & amusing, as are the items highlighted: Mr Whippy for W; Vinegar (as a antidote to bluebottle stings at the beach); an Ibis with its head down a rubbish bin (a non-verbal nod to the "bin chicken" label)
French/Aussie illustrator (architect) & Aussie writer (playwright) met in Paris in 1995.

The front cover of "Letters [geddit?] from Dunedin to all young New Zealanders". I wonder if the "young New Zealanders" tag was to evoke the very popular 1974 book "Poems to read to young New Zealanders".
There's a blond kid feeding ducks because the cover is brought to you by the page for D.

Front cover of "I spy NZ art" - "NZ" is a cut-out to reveal Reuben Paterson's appealing & immediately recognisable glitter-dust kowhaiwhai pattern art: this one is "The Kaiahuwhenua and his three sons" in blues and greens. Not shown: credited as a collaborative project led by Hanna Scott and Julia Waite.

front cover of Pī 'ā Pā Hawaiian Alphabet which is also... the back cover of the Hawaiian counting book which the alphabet book is conjoined with. A green character called "Palaka Joe" is climbing alphabet blocks: five vowels, seven consonants and an apostrophe and macron.

Ex-library book front cover of a reprint of Alligators All Around by Maurice Sendak, a Dad, Mom and child alligator. Not shown: It was 1962 so unfortunately there is a problematic page of "imitating Indians". You can see every page apart from that one in the original edition at The Marginalian (we just found it when googling info today) https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/07/18/alligators-all-around-maurice-sendak-alphabet-book-1962/

Front cover of Animalia, lion in pride of place, peacock pulling focus. (Base has said this book going "gangbusters" allowed him to turn his hobby into a career; it took him three years to complete.)